I always love doing repeat business! To me, it’s a huge compliment and I feel super lucky to make cakes for the same great people I’ve made cakes for in the past.

I had already done a bulldozer cake for little Atreyu’s 2nd birthday and now it was time for his sister’s 1st birthday!

I even got to add a new pan to my cake arsenal for this one!

I wasn’t sure exactly how to level this thing haha, but I worked it out.

It was a great zebra cake inside. I was pretty stoked on how bright the colors came out.
The exterior was awesome as well. :) I tried a new technique with this since I wasn’t sure exactly how to cover the star with one sheet of fondant, plus, we wanted the panels to be different colors. So I cut panels of fondant to attach at each corner.

Perfect!
Super happy with how it all turned out! Can’t wait to make another star cake!

Also, I love that this cake included two of my favorite things to do with a cake… zebra cake and zebra stripes!

My niece Sophia turned four this year! So crazy how fast the time flies.
Last year I made her this cake:

This year she’s obsessed with Scooby Doo. Some one suggested I make the Mystery Machine and as much as it stresses me out to make vehicles, I decided I could make this happen lol…
I baked the cake for the van in a bread loaf pan sort of like this one:
Then I stuck it in the freezer for a while to let it get hard so that I could trim it down a bit without it falling apart on me. The cake itself was a hilarious idea that I had to add half a package of strawberry jello and a few handfuls of fresh diced strawberries into my cake mix! (IT WAS DELICIOUS)
The bottom cake was tiedye zebra cake :) (See how to make this type of cake here!)

That cake was gone in like… a split second haha. It was eaten about as fast as I could cut it! I think I cut almost 30 slices out of it all and there were only two left over! I call that sweet success! ;)

My wonderful former roommate Brad told his neighbors about my cakes and they contacted me about a joint birthday party they were throwing for their children. (I think Brad knew he’d be invited to the party… win-win for him hahaha)

Now, some of you might know I don’t care much for cupcakes… well, let me rephrase, making cupcakes. You bring some over, I’ll nom them all day. Anyhow, that weekend was like… my cupcake nightmare weekend. Between this and another order, about 75 cupcakes.
I’ll tell you what though, they were darn cute.
I was asked to do a small cake for each child and some cupcakes with matching theme.
Everything was just freaking adorable.

For Dylan:

Making the flame cupcakes was a BLAST.I swirled yellow and orange icing and then topped some with white chocolate ladders and some with white chocolate flames. I made the flames by painting white chocolate onto wax paper and then airbrushing them! They came out so well and the little fire truck was awesome.

For Aubrey,

Little lady bugs and flowers, super springy colors… the lady bug on the cake matches the ladybug on the dress they got her for the party. ADORBS.

Ok, so maybe I don’t ALWAYS hate making cupcakes. But don’t quote me on that ;)

You’ll have to excuse the lack of tutorials maybe for a week or two. I’m still trying to piece my life back together.

This is one of the coolest cakes I’ve ever put together. I was super proud of it. My friend’s son was turning 4 (which is INSANE) and wanted a Nightmare Before Christmas theme.
I think I did them proud…

Jacks’ face was hand drawn with edible markers and the skulls were cast in white chocolate! Yum!

UPDATE: I HAVE CREATED A NEW VERSION OF THIS TUTORIAL! FIND IT HERE! For better laid out instructions!

So, my friend asked me to make her son a small cake and some cupcakes for his Nightmare Before Christmas themed birthday party. We were trying to find a cool cupcake tower for the cupcakes, but gosh they are expensive and kind of hard to find. I told her not to worry about it and that I would figure it out and make something…

lol

I knew what I WANTED it to look like. So I started sketching.

Then I decided to do a small scale test… I cut out small pieces from paper. Basically, you need the center base. This needs to be made of to equally shaped tiered shelves, one with a slit half way up from the bottom and one with a slit halfway down from the top.
Then you’ll need your shelves. These need to have “x”s cut in them that fit over the tiered base. Each shelf needs to have these cuts made large enough to fit over the first few tiers and then rest on their spot.
I did three tiers. I went totally whimsical so that I could put my shelves off center.

Assembly goes something like this:

Once I saw this small scale working well, I went full scale. I LOVE foam core board and use it all the time. It’s what I make most of my cake boards from. It’s so sturdy and easy to work with. I lightly outlined my pieces using a measuring tape to get it all right. Then I cut them out with an exacto knife.

I was really happy with how it turned out!

I figure you could cover the pieces with contact paper, scrapbook paper or wallpaper, line the edges with ribbon etc…

I’ll tell you what I don’t suggest doing lol
Painting it… with acrylic paint. Haha. Now don’t get me wrong, this turned out pretty well, but there were some rough times in between lol. I didn’t know that when you paint something like that, when it dries, it curls up. So I painted one side, left the house a while and came back to it all curled up! Yikes! I painted the other sides and that evened them out pretty well haha.

I also doubt acrylic paint is food safe, but I’m not placing any food directly in contact with it. So it will be fine.

My phone doesn’t photograph purple very well. Sorry about that, but yeah, it’s black and purple. These cupcakes are going to look great on it.

But seriously, this was so easy to make. I get foam core boards at the Dollar Tree for $1 each. I used three sheets for this and I used two $1 bottles of paint. So, yeah, this cost me $5 to make! Can’t wait to fill it up with cup cakes!

You could easily make one of these with simple circle shelves, crazy star shelves, whatever really! So simple that I can’t believe I never tried this before!

I have been asked a LOT of questions. I decided to try to make an illustration that MIGHT be helpful. God knows I’m not architect. Hopefully ANY of this makes sense. Try to make each step at least 3 inches tall to leave room for the cupcakes!!

Like this:

My friend Janna’s son Ender turned 5 this week and he loves Star Wars. Loves it!Janna is an amazing mom and she would do anything for her son. So she commissioned me to make what could well be the coolest cake I’ve ever made.I sat down with the little man and asked him what he wanted his cake to be. He said very matter of factly that he wanted Darth Vader. :)

Well, I set to work, trying to come up with a cool design that would be fun for him. I checked out some cakes online that other people had made, collected some ideas and came up with a plan.

This is what I made!

Now, Janna is such a freaking awesome mom, that she and another friend, Stacy, looked every place they could to find Ender a Darth Vader costume to wear to this party. They tracked one down at a store about an hour and a half away and he is going to get to be Darth Vader. How cool is that??? He said he doesn’t want people to know it’s him. He wants them to think it’s really Darth Vader. It’s so cute, I could actually explode. He might just be the cutest kid in existence. I wish I could go to the party and help them eat this cake! I don’t envy the fact that Janna has to slice this fancy thing open though lol.